A large chunk of the budget for Rehoboth's town government is on the line during a Proposition 2½ override vote that is scheduled for mid-July.

Marc Larocque Enterprise Staff Writer @Enterprise_Marc

REHOBOTH — A large chunk of the budget for Rehoboth’s town government is on the line during a Proposition 2½ override vote that is scheduled for mid-July.

The scheduling of the override vote came after an amendment approved by Rehoboth residents at a recent Town Meeting to provide a $1.7 million increase to the town’s budget line for the Dighton-Rehoboth Regional School District. The approval of the school budget increase left the rest of the general town government ($8.4 million) with a shortfall, as the school department budget line is being funded at $14.9 million, after the Rehoboth Finance Committee originally recommended a $13.1 million school budget.

Voting will take place at each of Rehoboth’s three districts from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. on July 15.

Another result of the budget shortfall is that a June 30 special Town Meeting was scheduled for 7 p.m. The purpose is to vote on a 60-day budget, because the $1.7 million is contingent on the July 15 override vote.

The town will not be able to spend any of its fiscal 2015 budget starting on July 1 without the passage of the temporary budget, town officials said.

If the Proposition 2½ override is rejected by the voters, another Town Meeting will be scheduled sometime before September so that the voters can decide where to cut the $1.7 million from the town government budget, said Michael P. Deignan, chair of the Rehoboth Finance Committee. Deignan said “the results could be devastating” for town services from public safety to the highway department if the Proposition 2½ override is defeated. Deignan said the $1.7 million represents 9 percent of the total $22.1 million Rehoboth budget, including town government and the school assessment.

Representatives of the School Committee who rallied voters to approve the school district’s increased spending at Town Meeting on May 12 explained that a $1.2 million increase in the Rehoboth school contribution was needed because of an assessment error that was identified this year. Previously, Dighton was paying more than it needed to while Rehoboth benefited from the error.

But newly elected Rehoboth Selectman David Perry pointed out that the other $500,000 was new spending that the school district got passed through Town Meeting. Perry said that it was the school district’s accounting problems that led to the assessment error, and the school could have approached the selectmen about the $500,000 before Town Meeting, but decided to go through the “back door.”

“If they had approached the selectmen prior to the Town Meeting and the Finance Committee, perhaps we could have worked something out, but they kind of came in through the back door and wanted 100 percent,” Perry said. “We understand accounting was done wrong.”

Perry said that what the School Committee and their supporters did was legal, but the result has put the town in a difficult situation, he said.

“It’s absolutely unnecessary,” Perry said. “The selectmen and the Finance Committee put forward a balanced budget at Town Meeting. It’s obvious what happened and it’s perfectly legal. The School Committee had the majority of people at Town Meeting who voted themselves the additional money that they wanted.”

Perry said the selectmen enacted a hiring freeze last week because of the looming override vote.

Deignan, from the Rehoboth Finance Committee, said that he has no way of knowing the will of the voters and doesn’t have a position on the matter. But he said that generally voters are more apt to support a Proposition 2 ½ to fund the schools than another to fund general government. Deignan said that town government often seems intangible or “nebulous” to some voters, which leads them to vote against higher taxes to support the town government.

When it comes to trimming down Rehoboth’s town government, however, there isn’t much to cut, he said.

“A yes vote means annual tax bills will go up approximately 9 percent,” Deignan said. “A no vote means town services provided to you will no longer be there. Everyone ultimately has to make their own choices. … Quite honestly I’ve worked on town’s finance committee for four years and one thing I can say is I firmly believe town government runs extremely lean and efficiently. There is not a lot of fat to cut.”

Deignan said the general town government budget is approximately $8.4 million, with $5.8 million of that being salaries and benefits and other personnel related costs. The remainder of that $2.6 million are expense related items, he said, of which $1.3 million are state-mandated or fixed costs which the town cannot remove, such as the cost of veterans benefits, insurance or the annual contribution to the Bristol County fund. After expenses, the town would have to look at reducing personnel, Deignan said.